FeedMySheep is the name of an online discussion group, called in techie language, a "listserve".

To enroll in FeedMySheep you need to be an inquirer or participating student in New Castle Presbytery's Commissioned Lay Pastor Program. To enroll as an inquirer or student:

contact Rev. Tom Davis: tcd123@alumni.pitt.edu.

__Here is how a listserve works__:

A listserve is a way of facilitating an online discussion consisting of

email messages posted by members of a group. These messages are

disseminated automatically to all members of the group by a computer which

retains the membership list of the group, and archives all posted messages.

A listserve should not be confused with a "chat room". When you subscribe

to a listserve you have the leisure to read and reply to other members'

messages on your own schedule. That's called asynchronous communication. By

contrast, in a chat room people communicate in "real time". That's

synchronous communication. Chat rooms are exciting and spontaneous, but I

prefer to communicate with time to reflect and compose my responses

carefully. Both types of online communication have advantages and

disadvantages.

If your church doesn't have a listserve, you might consider creating one for such general

purposes; or, you might want to start a listserve to address a particular

educational or pastoral need. For instance, you could start a listserve

about the process of grieving, or one to discuss a book, or one to talk

about raising children. There is no limit to the possibilities for content,

so long as you can find a competent and diligent person to moderate the

discussion. Now, let's think a bit about what makes a good moderator.

A moderator should be fairly skilled in the use of a personal computer, for

he or she may need to give basic technical assistance to beginners. Above

all, a moderator must have people skills. Sometimes discussions can become

heated, and feelings can get hurt. A moderator needs to set boundaries for

courteous writing at the very beginning of the group, and keep calling

members back to those agreed-upon standards for communication. Sometimes a

moderator must terminate a member if he or she cannot abide by those

standards. Therefore, moderator must have the courage to lead, to take

stands occasionally for the good of the group. A moderator must be willing

to read listserve notes on a regular and frequent basis, and should be ready

to stimulate further discussion if traffic lags. If a listserve is about a

particular topic and that topic has been clearly defined from the start, the

moderator should keep the group on task. If the content of notes diverges

too far from the agreed-upon topic, the moderator might suggest forming

another listserve to handle that discussion. However, if your listserve is

for general purposes, the moderator can make the train of thought easier to

follow by encouraging members to title their notes in a way that makes

threads of conversation readily apparent. If a member wants to respond to

another member's note, and does so by clicking the reply button, then that

reply message will automatically be assigned the same title as the original

note. This facilitiates topic "threading." However, members who want to

start another topic for discussion should title their note

differently. Otherwise,readers wishing to follow a thread will be confused.

New members of listserves should be cautioned to check whether the note they

are reading comes from the listserve address or the private address of the

writer. Why? Because if you reply to a note coming from a listserve, your

response goes to every member of the listserve, not just the author of the

note. Sometimes you might not want every member of the group to read your

reply, just the author. So, remember to check the sender's address in your

messages, and reply to a listserve note by hitting the reply button only

when you want your message to go to everyone.

Another thing listserve members should be cautioned about is

confidentiality. A good general rule for online communication is: Don't

write anything that you wouldn't mind the world finding out. Yes, listserve

providers are dedicated to keeping your communication private and

confidential, but earnest and clever hackers can bust in, and besides,

people do love to share information, and group notes can be forwarded. So,

don't talk about confidential material online. I once thought that it would

be helpful for a group of pastoral counselors to discuss cases online,

provided of course that we would change the names of the clients involved,

and some details of the cases. I was admonished by cyber-veterans that such

measures are totally inadequate to protect personal privacy. Because

cyber-communication is so extensive, because your writing can reach people

you never thought it could, the mere changing of names and a few details

will not throw off readers who know enough to connect the dots. Again,

don't write anything that you wouldn't mind the world knowing about.

Now that you've read about how you could use a listserve in your community

of faith, perhaps you might say: "Well, who needs it? I can make a

discussion group just by compiling a list of email addresses and saving that

list in my address book. Every time I want to discuss something with that

group of people, I'll just invoke that distribution list." Granted,

discussion groups can be handled that way. However, listserves have several

advantages: First, messages sent to multiple addresses are likely to be

filtered out by spam filters. Secondly, listserve messages are archived by

the listserve computer. Newcomers to a listserve can easily read messages

that were posted before they joined. This feature is not available with

distribution lists. Thirdly, every time you receive a message from a

distribution list, you have access to a bunch of email addresses that others

might not want you to have, whereas a listserve does not reveal the personal

addresses of its members. Only the moderator knows the addresses. Privacy

is important to many people when they realize that the proliferation of

their email address will likely invite more unwanted email (spam).

So, maybe you're ready to set up a listserve. To whom do you turn? There

are companies galore that will handle your listserve for a fee, and maybe

the service provider that your faith community already uses offers this

service. Want to set up a free listserve instead? I'd suggest using Yahoo

Groups or Google Groups. I used Yahoo for quite a while, but found that the

web interface was awkward and frustrating, so I turned to

www.googlegroups.com, which I find much easier to use. With free listserves

you'll have to put up with ads along a border of your messages, but you soon

tune them out of your consciousness. Go for free, I say!

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